Scars
by TeaLogic
Summary: After delivering Patience Gibbs to Connor's doorstep, Aveline is persuaded to stay and help mentor her. The results of the collaboration prove oddly useful to all. [Post AC3/Liberation/AvelineDLC. Connorline.]


These oneshots will alternate in POVs between Connor and Aveline.

And please note that this will be a slow burner. A very slow burner. You better get a blanket :P

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**Connor**

He looks at it every day; stares hard at the patchwork of furiously tangled skin that rakes across his stomach until his head becomes dizzy and sick. His body burns consistently. Not just with the physical pain, which catches him regularly, but its more the memories that singe his blood and score into his mind. He feels like ash. Haunted ash. And this fire only lessons a fraction with each passing day. The heat is slow to draw out of his body and sets to reignite at the slightest thing, an old painting of a battle that hangs on the wall and the sunset casting the kitchen window and bathing the room orange. Then there are things he just can't seem to throw away. Mementoes like necklaces, feathers, hidden blades- that diary. _That damn diary_. An epitome of his mistakes. Learning that his father's whole being actually existence in ink and paper and not what he told him. Of course, now that he's not here anymore there is nothing Connor can do with that ridiculous book but he still has it on his desk.

The Homesteaders have been there to catch him since he returned. Indulge him with their need for protection, and it is ever clear that protection will always be needed. He's begun to recognise that he can be himself the most at the Homestead, so he stays there longer than ever before. There are games with the men and chats with the women. He can play properly with the children, who seem to be growing up a lot quicker than time allows.

But it is only half of him. There is the Brotherhood. Still. Still they remain at his side. Never criticising him for a second and congratulating him on purging the Templars. They still want his guidance and for the life of him he cannot figure out why, but he sends letters to them. Sometimes he can be drawn to the cities and he sees that there are people who need him there, who want direction and purpose. He speaks comfortingly to them, trying to reassure them in the face of this dangerous aftermath of history. He has to turn away when he sees the look of ultimate trust in their faces. The responsibility swells within and becomes so large that it threatens to smother him. He never stays for long now, makes excuses to leave as soon as he arrives. The assassins look confused, unsure, but he cannot stay. He's proved his failure more than once and he cannot understand why-

-but he still orders men to their deaths because people need to be killed. The targets have become more cruel, more inhumane. Their swift elimination is key to trying to overturn the giant tyranny that remains and threatens to undo the work he's already done. He has avoided killing in person, however. Like the brotherhood itself, he feels like he no longer knows how to do things correctly. He feels like he could not give them any parting words if he did kill again. He's tongue tied in that respect.

(He regrets, if he was going to pick _something _to regret, that he never said anything to Charles Lee.)

He orders death and destruction but responsibility is uglier than both. He cares not about slave traders or politicians or serial murderers that curse his name and threaten to kill him in various ways. What keeps him awake at night is the question of leadership. How is he supposed to lead, being barely through his twenties and still so desperately in need of guidance? How is supposed to lead when he was cut in half so easily and has had to redraw his physical limits almost every day?

It is now, in the harshest sense, that he sees the wisdom of Achilles' words. He can't have him at his side anymore, as logic dictates. So he now makes do with the bones at the Homestead. He finally digs out those supremely old and dusty books that Achilles once set for his instruction. Thick, heavily bounded tomes that he was supposed to read at night but they ended up kicked under his bed. They were tales of one's who were before, apparently. Ones who uncorked bottles, pursued arks and hunted the eyes of the world. Fascinating, but still nothing but pointless riddles for an exhausted teenage Ratonhnhaké:ton who was only anxious to shape the present world. Now a grown man who can only call himself Connor Kenway is desperation for distraction. To wallow in something other than his misery and the misery of Achilles and his father as well. It's probably not how his mentor would have wanted him to take up his studies once more. But he's not here to give instruction anymore and Connor has no other way to learn.

With his new vocation and the brotherhood seemingly going smoothly, the pain dulls for a little while. But then one afternoon Connor dates a letter and sees that it's the spring of 1784 and falls apart in his kitchen. A burst of anger makes him knock a plate onto the floor and it crashes violently though the still air. It's hard to breathe and he's too hot, scar flaring. His vision blurs and he's terrified at the sound of his heart thumping hard, pounding in his ears.

His control, curse the whole thing, only allows him for one small cry, a whimper really. A child's expression of grief. He hands tear through his hair, which is still a little short, but grown back since he killed Charles Lee. He demands himself to keep still, demands focus as he draws in a sharp breath. All his life, he's wanted charge of his own actions. He has it now, but feels out of control. Time is unravelling under his fingers, running away from him. Who has he been kidding- himself? He feels he is no one even in his own idea of being. He's just a man with a scar who has only been scraping by and just about conscious to the world. It's been a year, an entire year. A year since he drove a blade into Lee's heart and ended everything, and since then he has just been.

He calms, however. Birds chirp outside and Hunter can be heard running around yelling at them. Beyond, the Homesteaders go about their daily lives. He needs to do the same. It's been a year and what he's been doing, living half a life, cannot continue. He vows it. That day he makes arrangements to go to Boston, tearing up the letter. He'll deliver his instructions to Dobby in person- he will do it all in person from now on. He'll stay with his assassins longer, teach for longer. Begin to properly assess and observe what he's built so far and make it so much better.

What is it that keeps him going? Maybe it's the motion of the world moving so fast that he cannot help but be dragged along. Or it might be his stubbornness; the refusal to lock himself away, like Achilles, or to passively ignore his nature and past like his father. Connor doesn't really care to figure out what it is. Only that pursuit of truth and freedom is in his blood and he cannot pour it out of his system. It will remain there, always. He must engage with it before it can fester into something dangerous.

He manages to get to Boston within a week, and it welcomes him like an old friend. Dobby is delighted when she finds he stays for more than the average two or three days. He gets information about a young woman who is a potential recruit and unusually, decides to pursue the lead himself. Her age at sixteen is what concerns him the most. Young, without guidance or protection if the detail is correct and Connor knows how dangerous that can be.

He comes back to life a year after the death of Lee. The reward for his determination is ultimately a spectacular punch to the face and two broken fingers. Needless as it is to say, he underestimated the wilfulness and the right arm of Patience Gibbs.

He admires her wholeheartedly.


End file.
